Jay Lim, 62, owner of Edo II in Danbury, a restaurant that serves Korean and Japanese food, weighs in Tuesday, June 12, 2018, on the Trump-Kim summit. Lim, an immigrant from South Korea eats lunch in an empty restaurant because it's closed on Tuesdays. less

Jay Lim, 62, owner of Edo II in Danbury, a restaurant that serves Korean and Japanese food, weighs in Tuesday, June 12, 2018, on the Trump-Kim summit. Lim, an immigrant from South Korea eats lunch in an empty ... more

Jay Lim, 62, owner of Edo II in Danbury, has lunch in his restaurant which serves Korean and Japanese food, Tuesday, June 12, 2018, on the Trump-Kim summit. Lim an immigrant from South Korea, weighed in on the Trump-Kim summit. less

Jay Lim, 62, owner of Edo II in Danbury, has lunch in his restaurant which serves Korean and Japanese food, Tuesday, June 12, 2018, on the Trump-Kim summit. Lim an immigrant from South Korea, weighed in on the ... more

This handout photo taken on June 12, 2018 and released by The Straits Times shows North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un (L) shaking hands with US President Donald Trump (R) as they meet for the historic US-North Korea summit, at the Capella Hotel on Sentosa island in Singapore. Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un became on June 12 the first sitting US and North Korean leaders to meet, shake hands and negotiate to end a decades-old nuclear stand-off. less

This handout photo taken on June 12, 2018 and released by The Straits Times shows North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un (L) shaking hands with US President Donald Trump (R) as they meet for the historic US-North ... more

Photo: KEVIN LIM / AFP /Getty Images

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President Donald Trump walks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Sentosa Island, Tuesday, June 12, 2018, in Singapore.

President Donald Trump walks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Sentosa Island, Tuesday, June 12, 2018, in Singapore.

Photo: Evan Vucci / Associated Press

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President Donald Trump meets with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Sentosa Island, Tuesday, June 12, 2018, in Singapore.

President Donald Trump meets with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Sentosa Island, Tuesday, June 12, 2018, in Singapore.

Photo: Evan Vucci / Associated Press

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President Donald Trump meets with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Sentosa Island, Tuesday, June 12, 2018, in Singapore.

President Donald Trump meets with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Sentosa Island, Tuesday, June 12, 2018, in Singapore.

NORWALK — Longtime adversaries have now become friends, President Donald Trump declared Tuesday, following a historic meeting in Singapore with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

The summit marked the first meeting between the two nations that have been bitter rivals since the Korean War ravaged and divided the Korean Peninsula nearly seven decades ago.

Both leaders signed an agreement that reaffirmed North Korea’s commitment to achieve complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula in exchange for halted U.S. military exercises in South Korea.

Sean Ahn, head pastor of the Connecticut Korean Mission Church in Norwalk, was in disbelief as he watched the news unfold on the TV screen inside his Stamford home.

The 52-year-old South Korean native never imagined he’d witness such a meeting between the U.S. and North Korea in his lifetime — let alone two months after North Korea and South Korea held its own historic summit to move toward the reunification of the Korean Peninsula.

“I think Kim Jong Un has made the decision to change his country,” Ahn said Tuesday, sitting outside his office at church.

“We always pray for that, but this was unexpected,” he added.

While Ahn is hopeful the Singapore summit will lead to change, he is still cautiously optimistic about Kim Jong Un’s follow-up actions. The same is true for George Paik, a board member of the World Affairs Forum in Stamford who was a foreign service officer for the U.S. State Department from 1988 to 1995.

He said the event needs to be looked at step by step, partially because North Korea has been “difficult for so long” and that Trump is a little unpredictable himself.

“North Korea has always been intransigent and mysterious, opaque, to the rest of us,” Paik said. “The fact that they’re going on this peace offensive, or this charm offensive, is interesting, but they haven’t said anything that hasn’t been said before and broken.”

Having endured empty promises for more than two decades from North Korean regimes, Jay Lim, a South Korean native and owner of the Edo II restaurant in Danbury, was not at all optimistic about the recent talks.

He said North Korea gave nothing during the summit to indicate a change from previous efforts, noting that similar promises of denuclearization agreed to by North Korea during the six-party talks around 2005 were not successful.

While North Korea agreed to give up its nuclear weapons at the time, it pulled out of the agreement and expelled inspectors from the country in 2009, he added.

“The Korean Peninsula is still a very dangerous place,” said Lim, who came to the U.S. in his 30s seeking new opportunities. “Nothing has changed. Kim Jong Un killed his uncle and his own brother. How can you trust a man like that?”

Similarly, Paul Kim, who has run a dry-cleaning and tailoring business in Old Greenwich for 28 years, said he would not want Kim Jong Un, whom he described as cruel dictator, to gain any significant advantages from negotiations or through deception.

“It’s just a start,” said Kim, a South Korean native. “We hope something good comes of it.”

The summit also drew mixed reactions from local experts with knowledge on relations between the U.S. and North Korea.

Howell Williams, a political science professor at Western Connecticut State University, said the lack of mention of North Korea’s “horrific actions” against its people raised some concerns. Such actions include starvation in prisons, work camps and the country’s practice of killing its political critics, he said.

“I haven’t heard the president say ‘human rights violations’ once in terms of these discussions and that raises concerns,” Williams said. “There is credible and legitimate evidence that this is a brutal regime. This does not seem like a trustworthy regime.”

Additionally, North Korea has no reason to give up its nuclear weapons and has the ability to make more at any given moment, said Jason Shaplen, who was appointed during the Clinton administration in 1995 to negotiate with North Korea to freeze their nuclear development program.

Plus, there is no guarantee that the next U.S. president won’t walk away from the agreement as Trump did with the Iran deal, Shaplen added.

“I think we’ll find we’re very far apart on what they are willing to do from here,” said Shaplen, CEO of the social services organization Inspirica in Stamford. “If the U.S. goal is for the North Koreans to denuclearize, I suspect the North Koreans have a very different view of what the future holds, and I doubt it include denuclearizing even if they say they will.”

Although it’s not clear how the denuclearization process will be verified, Trump said he trusts Kim Jong Un will stay true to the “comprehensive document” they signed, which also includes the commitment to recovering the remains of prisoners of wars and others missing in action.

He noted the North Korean leader had told him after the agreement that North Korea is already destroying a major missile engine testing site.

“This isn’t the past. This isn’t another administration that never got it started and therefore never got it done,” Trump said at a post-conference news briefing Tuesday.